Phillippa Yaa de Villiers - ORIGINAL SKIN

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers - ORIGINAL SKINDates and Times: 2 December 2009 at 18:00

Venue: Momentum Theatre (SA State Theatre), Pretoria

Description: Phillippa Yaa de Villiers - ORIGINAL SKIN

Phillippa Yaa de Villiers draws a portrait of a pink bedroom in suburban South Africa during the seventies, a childhood that has deep secrets buried in it. It's about understanding how apartheid affected on person's life and how she started finding her way out of this particular labyrinth. Original Skin is a journey of identity.

“After a number of incidents in my childhood -- when I was expelled from the movies, teased at school and asked personal questions about my origins -- I demanded photographs of my mother, pregnant. Then, when I wanted to see pictures of myself as a newborn, there weren’t any. I rifled through my mother’s papers looking for some official document explaining me. I never found one.

The greatest challenge in telling my story was to do so without bitterness, self-pity or anger. I have been provoked and I assert that some things are not forgivable; it is not my job to absolve anybody. I am a writer and an actress, I want to make work that is respected. This story has been a burden at times; I have felt upstaged by my own life story. Original Skin is my attempt to make a truce with the circumstances that made me and others like me -- black African people on a quest for their true identity.” Phillippa Yaa de Villiers to Mail and Guardian